The Lost Leaf bar and art gallery held a GoFundMe online fundraiser to help raise money to save the bar and make some improvements after it was forced to close due to COVID-19.
“We have been shut down for over a month and a half, but we still have insurance, rent and loss of products that we have to maintain,” owner Eric Dahl said.
Dahl said that with no cover charge for the bar’s musical performances and events, it operates on a tight budget.
The fundraiser for The Lost Leaf was created to ask for the public’s help to eventually reopen. The website lists several rewards people can get in return for their donations, according to the GoFundMe page.
The booking manager, co-founder and artist Tato Caraveo said he and some of the other employees are selling his artwork in order to raise money for the bar.
As an artist, he said the flexible schedule from working at the bar is important to him.
“It gives you the freedom to paint more for having such a flexible schedule,” he said.
Caraveo said that the money raised will not only help with necessary maintenance in keeping the bar running but will also help support the staff while they are not working.
“We have it running to the end of April in hopes that by May 1 they will let us open up again,” Dahl said. “Since we don’t have food, we were required to close.”
Artist and bartender Tyson Krank shared his views on how working at the bar has impacted his life.
“This experience has absolutely changed myself and my life,” Krank wrote in an email. “I owe downtown and The Lost Leaf so much and I know many people feel the same.”
According to an email from Dahl, the bar is the longest-running live music venue in downtown Phoenix.
“Keeping the bar open for all of us is important,” Krank said. “The employees, the community and the musicians. It’s crucial for all of us.”
Krank said that if The Lost Leaf were to go under, his “bartending days are also gone with it.”
“To me it’s a pretty significant place that was open at a time when there weren’t really many options in downtown, especially the Roosevelt Row area,” Caraveo said.
According to Dahl, not only have people who knew the bar and its staff helped out with donations thus far, but even people from the broader community as well.
“We got a good donation from another friend of ours from the FilmBar, and they also offered to put up some of their lifetime movie tickets for us to use to raise money,” he said. “We haven’t taken them up on that yet but we may do that.”
Krank, the bartender, emphasized that this fundraiser is the difference between whether The Lost Leaf can reopen or not.
“The fundraiser is basically the bar’s lifeline right now,” he said.
Contact the reporter at aglidic@asu.edu.
